composite monarchy

Coined in 1975 by German-born British historian Helmut Koenigsberger and popularised by Sir John Huxtable Elliott.

composite monarchy (plural composite monarchies)

1. (politics, historical) A type of monarchy, common in Europe during the early modern period, in which a single ruler governed several territories as if they were separate kingdoms, each with its own local traditions and legal structures.
   • 1995 [Routledge], Conrad Russell, Chapter 8: Composite monarchies in early modern Europe, Alexander Grant, Keith Stringer, Uniting the Kingdom?, 2003, Taylor & Francis e-library, page 133,

     All multiple kingdoms are composite monarchies, but not all composite monarchies are multiple kingdoms.

   • 2000, David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, Cambridge University Press, page 22:

     These historians have rediscovered what J. R. Seeley realised a century ago: that England, just like France, was a composite monarchy, just as Britain, just like the Spanish Monarchy, was a multiple kingdom.⁷⁰ In the former, a diversity of territories, peoples, institutions and legal jurisdictions is cemented under a single, recognised sovereign authority; in the latter, various kingdoms were ruled by a single sovereign, while they maintained varying degrees of autonomy.

   • 2015, Alissa M. Ardito, Machiavelli and the Modern State, Cambridge University Press, page 195:

     Composite monarchy offered Machiavelli a vision of polity that did not enslave its territory, as Florence, operating the dictates of empire, invariably did. Contra empire, early modern monarchy offers a vision of cities and territories coexisting on equal footing. is there a way to combine composite monarchy and republic to build a new kind of state?

• (several territories governed by a single ruler): composite state, personal union